Social media generally refers to virtual interactions in which people create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. In social media, people often discuss topics of interest, which can include products, brands, and the like. For example, a social media user can maintain a profile (such as a webpage) on a social media website, and, through the profile, discuss topics of interest, share the topics with other social media users, perform other actions indicating an interest in the topic (such as “liking” the product or brand or “tweeting” about the product or brand), or combinations of them. Information about interests of social media users can be useful, for example, to provide targeted advertisements to the users.
Data collection systems can be connected to server computer systems that host social media websites to obtain the information about the interests of the social media users. Such data collection systems can be included, for example, in enterprise systems. Enterprise systems can be implemented as large-scale application software packages that support business processes, information flows, reporting, and data analytics in complex organizations. Interfaces can be established between the data collection systems and the server computer systems such that the transfer of information about the interests of the social media users occurs automatically, i.e., without or with minimal user intervention. However, structural or functional changes, for example, to hardware or software (or both), on the server computer systems' end can affect the transfer of the information to the data collection systems if the latter is unaware of the changes.